


Bucky Barnes' family (whom he loves very much and who loved him right back)

by gentleau (iwanna_seeyou_undoit)



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Family, Family Feels, Fluff, Gen, Pining, but it is very much pre-slash, the Barnes family and the love they have for each other, yes steve is part of the Barnes family so he is mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:34:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23542441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwanna_seeyou_undoit/pseuds/gentleau
Summary: Bucky Barnes is raised by a gentle father and a loud, independent mother. He is raised to be a caregiver, a protector. To love.Basically just a think piece about who Bucky grew up with and how he grew into the man he is today. A precursor for the full fic I will eventually write.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22





	Bucky Barnes' family (whom he loves very much and who loved him right back)

**Author's Note:**

> I sat down to try to write some mutual pining and this is what happened instead. It feels like giving Bucky back to himself, letting him heal retroactively. He grew up so surrounded by love and goodness. This was so cathartic to write, my brain wanted angst and pining but this is what my heart wanted..  
> And please, as always, comments make me smile.

To understand Bucky Barnes, it is necessary to first understand his family.

George William Barnes married Evelyn Levita in September 1916, eight months before the US declaration of war in 1917. Evelyn found out she was pregnant in October, and George spent the time between the happy announcement and the day his draft arrived doting on her. George fought until the Armistice was declared, and returned home with an honourable discharge, no medals, and a much quieter, though no less gentle manner. He deeply regrets not being around for the birth of his first son and hates that he missed his first years. When he returned home (the very start of 1919; by some stroke of luck he wasn’t posted as part of the occupation troops) Bucky was talking. It shocked Geroge to tears that Bucky already knew how to say ‘da’. Evie taught him between her usual shift at the grocer’s and night classes. She qualified top of her class but jobs were hardly flying out the door during the war and besides, Hardy needed her at the shop.

Maybe, George thinks, and it’s a theory he trots out a couple times a year, maybe his missed year is why Bucky is such a mamma’s boy. One thing he knows for sure - he loves that kid, his only son, with his whole heart. 

Evelyn Levita married George William Barnes in September 1916, eight months before the war and one month before the best surprise of her life. Little James Buchanan Barnes was planned, but her ma had had issues conceiving and she’d worried it would carry over.

Women who came into the shop asked her if she resented her husband for leaving when he did, and Evelyn would have to find an excuse to duck into the backroom and clench her teeth around the urge to put them all in their place. No, she didn’t resent her husband. Kind, sweet, gentle George Barnes never wanted to go to war but his moral compass wouldn’t let him duck the draft. He went, reluctantly, but with his shoulders squared and a loaf of fresh bread wrapped in one of her scarves in his bag.

In the first two weeks of Bucky’s life Evelyn wrote George multiple letters a day; every new miraculous change in their boy had to be recorded.

_Sat James on the bed while I sorted laundry today. He went suddenly silent (he’s always making noise - humming along to the radio I think) so checked on him and what do you know! He had one of your shirt sleeves in his little fist. Just watched him for a while. Went to fold it away and James just refused to give it up. The grip on him! Tucked that little hand into his chin and held on for dear life. Bad news I’m afraid. You won’t be getting the shirt back._

It took a while for mail to get through to Ypres but George always wrote back just as much. Buchanan had been George’s idea of a middle name and he insisted on writing it out every time: _How is James Buchanan? A Lance Corporal in my Brigade says his son got colicy real bad about this age. I hope he’s not giving you grief._

Or: _Send my love to James Buchanan._ Evelyn always did but she never wrote to George when Bucky first said ‘da’, she was saving it for when he came home.

She was determined that he would come home.

When George did, he broke down crying when Bucky, a few weeks shy of his second birthday, fixed himself to his father’s neck and screamed ‘da!’ right in his face.

‘Well hello, James Buchanan,’ when he finally could speak. ‘Your mother’s told me a lot about you. I love you very much.’

George didn’t go back to work in the garage immediately, took a few weeks to settle in at Evelyn’s order, but eventually got too stir crazy. Evelyn had left her job at the grocer’s as soon as Bucky got too big to just sit quietly in a basket behind the counter, but she found a job doing the accounts for a plumber’s that let her take the books home and do it at night. The same ladies from the grocery store caught her in the street and asked if her husband didn’t mind that she was still working now he was back, and didn’t it make him feel terribly bad? With no paycheck on the line, Evelyn hadn’t bothered to hold back her reply, even if it did mean suffering their long stares in shul every week. 

Their loving transfers on to their first daughter - Rebecca Marion Barnes - when she is born in the middle of winter, 1920. She kicked her way through the last trimester, much to her long-suffering mother’s dismay, and then refused to come into the world any sooner than she was ready.

Bucky, inquisitive and handsy at age three, wanted to do as much with her as possible. Evelyn and George worried - toddlers often forgot themselves in their excitement - but Bucky was the most gentle, most devoted big brother in all of Vinegar Hill. Bucky and Becca got on like a house on fire.

It was Becca who gave Bucky his name, even. After she mastered her first few words, she set her sights on her brother. She absorbed all the ‘James Buchanans’ that were thrown around (and there were a lot. Four year old Bucky was a whirlwind of trouble) and decided the syllables were too unwieldy by far. One evening when Bucky was doing his level best to scale the kitchen counter, Evelyn let fly a stern ‘James Buchanan!’ and little Becca echoed her with a cry of her own. Mostly babbled nonsense but her thrilled ‘Bucky!’ had been unmistakeable. It diverted Bucky from his quest to reach the loaf of bread still cooling on the bench and he’d turned to grin doe-eyed at his sister. 

They hardly ever call each other by their full names. Occasionally when they’re sore at each other, but mostly it’s Becca and Bucky. Once, one night when Steve is having dinner at the Barnes house, Becca corners Bucky in the kitchen. Nothing unusual had happened - Bucky and Steve showed up just after six, Bucky watched Steve extra close when he spoke at the table, slung one arm all comfortable and casual around the back of Steve’s chair.

‘James,’ she murmurs, head bent close to Bucky’s, face mostly in shadow. ‘Does he know?’ And Bucky goes all silent and bruised. Grabs her hands. ‘He can never know, Rebecca.’ And even though Becca has her own opinion on that, she nods. Kisses the crown of his head where his curls are thickest. 

Martha Lillian Barnes is born in the spring of 1925. Becca is five and Bucky is eight and has been best friends with Steve Rogers for two years now, so it’s like Martha’s got three siblings instead of two. The three of them love on Martha with all they have.

Okay, honestly? Becca is a little jealous, takes a while to warm up. Little Martha takes all Bucky’s attention it seems like, and when she’s not annoyed about that, she’s annoyed how Bucky goes all clucky and possessive and acts like he’s the only one who’s got a new sister. When she realises that Bucky hasn’t forgotten about her, and that sometimes (most times) he’d rather be out in the street with Steve, she warms up pretty quick.

As Martha grows up, they get thick as thieves. Bucky is the brother, the caregiver. And he brings along Steve whose status as an older kid who isn’t their brother earns him a lot of clout. His presence doesn’t help tone down Becca’s mischievous spirit, the readiness inside her to cause (and get into) all sorts of trouble a girl really shouldn’t be - skinning her knees right along with Bucky and Steve. And Martha is quiet, sensible. Where Becca wants to jump into anything and Bucky will do most things to keep his sisters entertained, Martha would rather just sit and watch. More often than not, she gets dragged into their nonsense, but she’ll tell ma and da about it as soon as they get home. ‘Serious little Martha mouse’ Bucky and Becca call her. She hates it.

And she also can’t see why Bucky has to answer the draft, reckons fighting is about the dumbest pastime anyone dreamed up, but she also asks Steve for his pamphlets on socialism. ‘She contains multitudes, this girl.’ She’s also sixteen and has broken the hearts of several neighbourhood boys since she let the first one down easy in the school yard at thirteen. 

Then, in 1935 when Bucky is eighteen, Becca is fifteen, and Martha is ten, Zelda is born. Zelda is everyone’s sweetheart and George and Evelyn make no secret of the fact that she’s another miracle baby (Evelyn is almost forty). She latches on to Bucky something wild.

Bucky, at eighteen, struts around with her on one hip, his shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbow, a cloth on one shoulder to mop up her drool.

Bucky, at twenty, brings her everywhere he can. When he moves in with Steve, Zelda is the first one to see the apartment. She’s the first one he tells about Steve, too. Becca works it out a couple months afterwards, but Zelda is first. And, when he is drafted, it’s little Zelda who breaks his heart most. Poor thing is only six and can’t understand why he has to leave. Just knows that Martha is angry and sullen, Becca and ma won’t talk about it, and her da has gone more stiff and reserved than she’s ever seen him. Bucky promises them all he’ll come back but it is Zelda, the only one who still believes that a person can make a promise like that and keep it, it’s Zelda that he hates himself most for letting down. 

So Bucky Barnes is raised to be a caregiver, a protector. Raise to put on a brave face and make people smile because it’s the right thing to do. He has been trained to be a Sergeant his whole life. He has three baby sisters to love and spoil and protect.

Once, Bucky’s teacher, the one who never gave up trying to force him to use his right hand, joked that George and Evelyn Barnes only knew how to produce girls, that their one boy didn’t really count, cuz he was soft as a girl anyhow. Bucky wanted to punch his lights out, not because he thought it an insult, but because how dare anyone think it a bad thing.

He taught himself to fight, first for Steve, and then for his sisters. As it turned out his sisters never really needed protecting. Becca was loud-mouthed but sensible about it in a way Steve wasn’t. Martha was never going to be much trouble except if she ended up pissing off a politician somewhere in which case, Bucky wasn’t going to be much help (not before the army, at least) and Zelda was too little to concern Bucky, back then. 

Bucky Barnes is raised by a gentle father and a loud, independent mother.

He is raised to see the good in the world and protect it. To love.

He is whip-smart, has his ma’s proficiency with numbers, his da’s keen eye for mechanics, and he reads with a quiet ferocity that shocks them both. He wins essay prizes at school. He gets a job with his da at the garage and keeps notebooks full of his neat blocky handwriting squirrelled away. He’s funny and he’s soft-hearted, always quick with a smile and an arm to walk a dame home safe. He never complains about peeling Steve out of whatever alley he finds himself in and he takes on extra shifts at the docks when rent and Steve’s pills use all his paycheck from the garage.

Bucky Barnes was a man made to belong to a large family.

A man made to love and be loved.


End file.
